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Monday, May 29, 2017

Carolingian Christianity (Notes:59)

Carolingian Christianity relied heavily on
clerics in order to hold the religious establishment together; because literacy
had dwindled to such a stark low, and because the Carolingian authority
demanded such a heavy hand over the regulation of religious life—clerics were responsible
for drawing up charts, charters, and religious documents, including their
distribution throughout the territories, not to mention the religious
establishment was responsible for vetoing papal elections. So, control over the
clergy, and to an additional extent the literacy of them, remained an important
issue.

In 824, Lewis the Pious made an agreement
with the Pope where only when notified in advance, could a pope receive
confirmation. The Carolingians were also able to decisively intervene in issues
of what constituted Christian orthodoxy. But what their most important theological
power was likely within the realm of iconoclasm (the issue which had driven the
papacy from the Byzantine empire in the early eighth century); in 787, after negotiations
in Nicaea had seemingly drawn the papacy and the Byzantines closer together, and
an irate Charlemagne upset over the exclusion of the Franks, Charlemagne
summons his own council in Frankfort at 794. This council condemned what the
council of Nicaea had drawn upon, badly misunderstanding the position (it was
thought that the council permitted the worship of images, which was not true). Indirectly,
the pope is even condemned before being forced to tow the Carolingian line on
iconoclasm.

In addition to this control over religious
laws and dogma, the Carolingians supported missionary work in pagan territories
to the east of them. Logistical support and even protection was provided by the
Carolingians to those missionaries who wanted to go and promote the Christian
faith; such was Carolingians policy for close to a couple centuries. Many of these
missionaries were Germanic in origin and so were recruited to return back to ‘the
old country’ and convert those who had not already converted.

Unfortunately for Carolingian sponsored
missionaries, the efforts to convert the Saxons did not treat much water. Saxon
kings were hesitant to convert if they were not able to see their ancestors in
the afterlife while the common person felt the views incompatible with their
own lives. It would not be until military conquest, and around Charlemagne’s
time, that Germanic conversion began to happen en mass.

Another Carolingian effort in regards to
Christianity was to encourage church reforms. Specifically, many Frankish
bishops and clergy came from the aristocrats and found it difficult to give up
their lifestyle—hunting, fighting (in war), and having families. The Parish
system would be created in an effort to balance out these discrepancies. The
Carolingian efforts were to regularize the system to the point where everyone
had access to a parish and a priest; so in 765, Pippen the Short ordered that
each diocese, should be divided up into parishes—one per village. Each parish
is to have its own church and priest. Though, in practice, it is difficult to
build and staff all these churches, the over-all result is that the number of
churches increases; in order to pay for all these new churches, the
Carolingians instigated the tithe, a mandatory payment which Christians must
make to their church which amounts to one-tenth of their regular revenue.

But the Carolingians were also interested
in monastic reform. After the Anglo-Saxon imposed discipline wavered, there
proliferated a series of different monastery routines (varying amounts of
prayers, not having to fast as often, etc.). A Goth by the name of Benedict
would lead to substantial reform after joining a monastery and not finding it
up to his personal standards; leaving said monastery, he leaves to live life as
a hermit, but like Anthony before him, people follow and he must build a monastery.
Eventually, the emperor attempts to extrapolate Benedict’s reforms onto the
whole imperial system. Though this effort is only difficultly applied and sporadic
in application, it nonetheless succeeds in raising the overall level.